Album of Broadsides

Artisan: Ken Blythe
Date: Unknown
Intended Room: Housekeeper’s Bedroom
Dimensions: 39 x 28 x 5 mm; 1 ⅛ x 1 ½ x ¼ inches (height x width x depth)
Inventory number: TBC

Provenance: Purchased from the artist’s daughter and son-in-law, who run The Little Book Company, via eBay, in June 2022.

The Quartermaines might be startled to know that their serene and efficient housekeeper is obsessed with the Victorian equivalent of true crime novels. Tucked away in her bedroom is this album, pasted full of accounts of ‘horred murder’ and recording the investigations, trials and executions that followed. Some of the broadsides helpfully record names in the headlines, so I’ve been able to identify some of of the cases.

‘John Pallett’, whose dying speech and confession are reprinted in a broadside, is presumably the one who murdered James Mumford in 1823; while ‘Lady Barrymore’ was Mary Ann Pearce, formerly the mistress of the 7th Earl of Barrymore who, after being thrown over by him, descended into a tragic life of gin and debauchery, and was popularly known as ‘The Boxing Baroness’. The ‘Edgware-Road Tragedy’ was the discovery of the head of Hannah Brown, who had been murdered by her newly-wed husband James Greenacre in 1837; while ‘Jarvis & Gould’ must be Richard Gould and Mary Ann Jarvis, convicted in 1852 for the murder of John Templeman. And that’s just a handful of the trial reports, dying speeches and other sensationalist reports in this little collection. Imagine the housekeeper curled up in bed, her hair in papers, reading this unsettling stuff by the soft glow of an oil lamp…